Tuesday 19 January 2016

American Horror Story

Since I mentioned American Horror Story while discussing Scream Queens, is this a game with the same group of players and the same system but new settings every year?

Murder House kicked the series off and was basically an attempt to make an American Horror Story... the American Horror Story... every American Horror Story! It threw in real events and urban legends at a rate of a couple a week, and that somewhat distracted from the central premise: a house where ghosts can pass for living, and everyone who dies there becomes one, and the normal-ish family who just bought it. That’s a premise you could run with pretty easily, from either side of the veil - a PC version of the family might try to investigate and solve the haunting more than just endure it, while the ghosts could follow the Wraith example of pursuing their own passions but having interconnected fetters.

Asylum was (largely) serious and pretty grim, apart from the special guest aliens and Devil. A criminally mismanaged mental hospital is a real nightmare. Characters stuck in or running a hospital or prison have good reasons to work together and peer into the institution’s mysteries.

Coven cuts the elements down to just two major New Orleans historical points, one minor one and the Salem witch trials as a basis for a Wizard School series where the main characters bicker and backstab but also come together against external threats, and indeed fight monsters! With some writing folks from Buffy heavily involved, it has some of that feel and could be played much like it.

Freak Show is also about ostracism and being made the other (as well as being partially a prequel to Asylum) and could be the basis for a drama-type game.

Hotel is... okay, Hotel is a Vampire game.

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